Melody, not Beat Perception, Predicts Rhythmic Error Detection

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationships among beat perception, error detection, and musical experience. We presented monophonic rhythms using a piano timbre along with two measures of beat perception (Harvard Beat Finding and Interval Test [BFIT] and Goldsmiths Beat Alignment Test) and a measure of melodic error detection. College musicians’ ( N = 43) ability to detect rhythm errors was not significantly correlated to their ability to perceive beat alignment (Goldsmiths test) or tempo change (BFIT). Age was related to performance on only one of the measures, the BFIT test. A regression model yielded pitch error detection as the only significant predictor of rhythmic error detection. We suggest that college musicians already possess a requisite ability for beat processing that allows them to perform error detection. The lack of relationship between beat perception and rhythmic error detection is explained by this requisite ability in the population, and we promote future research for pitch and rhythm processing as it relates to rhythm perception or performance.

Estimating the features of nervous processes among medical students as one of the main factors influencing labor productivity

The article considers the results of studying nervous processes in medical students. They influence labor functions productivity in the future labor activity. Testing was held by means of hardware and software complex (HSC) “NS-PsychoTest”. It includes several specialized tests for the experimental study of nervous system and a person’s psychological part. The main features of respondents’ nervous processes estimation was realized according to the author’s methodology created by E.P. Ilin in 1972 by means of the dynamics of hand movements tempo change. In terms of the research results interpretation we held factors analysis, which prevent the whole potential of physical culture means revelation at a higher educational establishment, including medical profile Universities, for an effective training of young specialists for their professional duties realization.

Moving Music

We examined how children (5- and 8-year-olds) associate changes in musical parameters with bodily motion, using movement and verbal tasks. In Task 1, participants moved to short musical stimuli involving bidirectional changes in pitch, loudness, or tempo. In Task 2, participants selected motion features appropriate to the same stimuli (forced-choice verbal task). In Task 1 the distribution of movement features significantly varied for different musical parameters: pitch change associated most strongly with vertical motion, loudness change with muscular energy and vertical motion, and tempo change with speed and muscular energy. In both tasks and for both ages, directions of change in motion and musical parameters correlated, e.g., increase in loudness was associated with increasing speed, increasing muscular energy, and spatial rise. The effect of pitch direction was mediated by temporal order, suggesting that overall pitch contour, rather than local direction only, affects bodily motion. Age affected responses to pitch direction, rather than loudness or tempo change. Results suggest that children consistently correlate musical and movement features through both verbal and motion responses, presenting an intricate web of auditory-motor-cognitive mappings.

Musical Tension and the Interaction of Dynamic Auditory Parameters

Though the Perception of Musical Tension has recently received considerable attention, the effect of interactions among auditory parameters on perceived tension has hardly been examined systematically. In this study, 132 participants (60 with music training) listened to short melodic sequences that combined manipulations of pitch direction, pitch register, loudness change, and tempo change, and rated in each sequence the overall tension level, as well as the direction of tension change (increasing or decreasing). For overall tension ratings, repeated measures ANOVAs showed main effects of loudness change, pitch direction, and pitch register (lower more tense), but not of tempo change. Importantly, several highly significant interactions among musical parameters (e.g., tempo and loudness, contour and loudness, tempo, contour, and register) were revealed. Tension change ratings were significantly affected by changes in loudness and tempo; register and contour elicited no main effect on tension change ratings, but interacted significantly. Results indicated that the mutual effect of auditory parameters on perceived tension is often strongly interactive, rather than additive. Increased loudness and low pitch register emerged as powerful determinants of perceived tension, often modulating the effects of pitch contour and tempo. We discuss results in light of an ecological model, in which perceived musical tension is affected by auditory cues for impending threat.